The Feldenkrais Method®

I established Coming to Your Senses to foster learning using the Feldenkrais Method of Somatic Education®, a method that will deepen your self-awareness about how you move so you can move with more comfort, ease, and grace. We all have our own way of being—thinking, feeling, moving, and sensing—in the world. The Feldenkrais Method® invites, through slow, delicate movements, our curiosity about the nature of that being. It asks us to tune into our sensations in order to learn about the habits and patterns we’ve developed over our lifetime and to realize new possibilities for moving through our daily lives. We center our senses to help differentiate between “easier” movements (those that are more comfortable and effortless, allowing our breath to flow) and ones that are more challenging (accompanied by pain, over exertion, or holding our breath). Coming to Your Senses provides supportive, guided opportunities for you to practice the Feldenkrais Method®. You can make finer distinctions about your habits for moving, ways of learning, and choices for taking these actions into your everyday life, whether you are lifting grocery bags, playing a sport, getting in or out of bed, rehabilitating from an injury, grappling with aging, or simply being in the world. 

For Moshe Feldenkrais, founder of the Method®, sensation is comprised of what we see, hear, touch, smell, or taste, along with our kinesthetic sense. Thus, in sensing ourselves, we consider not just the 5 senses, but also the rhythm with which we move, the timing involved in a movement, how we engage with the environment we are in, as well as the level of pain, discomfort, lightness or grace that may accompany our mobility.  Attending to these sensations, we find new resources in ourselves and our whole being moves with more awareness.   

The Feldenkrais Method® offers two formats of learning: group classes called Awareness Through Movement® (ATM) lessons, and individual lessons, called Functional Integration® (FI) lessons. Whichever format you choose, I will facilitate your learning processes; you can become more attuned to your own ways of moving and participating in your everyday life and activities. 

How does it work? Lessons can be done by anyone regardless of age or level of fitness. Although many people who experience the benefits of the Feldenkrais Method® feel it works like magic, there is science behind it. As we move, our nervous systems integrate our new understandings of ourselves, even if we can’t put those understandings into words. This can happen because of neuroplasticity (the ability of our brains –and thus our bodies—to learn and adapt). As a result, we find ways over time to move with more ease, efficiency and even elegance. The changes we undergo with each lesson fine tune our self-organization. Our skeletal, muscular and nervous systems work more cohesively with one another; we experience less muscular effort or tension, deeper breathing, a feeling of having better support for what we do. While these changes are generally slow and gradual, often you can sense improvement immediately. This is why it can feel like magic. It’s powerful. It changed my life! See what it can do for you.